Hill, however, does not report the whole story. Court documents indicate that Cox' e-mail was a response to a cease-and-desist letter from the attorney--and I have not seen the contents of that letter. The tone of Cox' e-mail does call her motivations into questions. But records show it did not come out of the blue; it was a response to a communication she had received. Either way, Cox would have been wise not to mix journalism with her business pursuits. This e-mail might have helped swing a jury against her, even though it has nothing to do with whether her reports on Obsidian and Padrick were defamatory or not.
Kevin Padrick
Forbes and The Times portray Padrick as an innocent figure, an attorney who nobly served as trustee in a bankruptcy case involving an Oregon firm called Summit Accommodators. A close look at the record indicates that is not the full story.
In various blog posts, Cox had called Padrick a "thug" and a "thief." The Times' David Carr said he could find nothing to substantiate that. Here's what Carr wrote about Padrick:
Mr. Padrick, a lawyer who is a member of the bar in four states and has never been disciplined or investigated from anything I could find, said he spent a lot of sleepless nights wondering how he ended up as Ms. Cox's bà �te noire.
I had to laugh at that one. I've been screwed repeatedly by lawyers who have clean disciplinary records. A lawyer who is with the right firm, or has enough financial or political clout, almost certainly will never be investigated for anything. A clean record does not mean a lawyer is a paragon of virtue.
Cox presented a substantial number of documents on her Web sites that indicate something smelled about the Summit Accommodators bankruptcy. In the following post, Cox presents links to about 20 documents that strongly hint at wrongdoing in the bankruptcy case--and these come from individuals closely connected to the case, not Cox herself. Two issues stand out:
(1) Padrick and his firm had worked for Summit Accommodators--Records show that Padrick and his firm, Obsidian, had signed a consulting contract with Summit Accommodators. Summit agreed to pay Obsidian a $100,000 retainer. How could Padrick serve as an impartial trustee when he had worked for one of the parties involved?
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